The previous article of the Ethos, Pathos, and Logos series defined pathos and described why emotional connection is so important for your presentations.

In this article, we explore how to build strong pathos in your presentations through a variety of emotional pathways.

Pathos Superhighways: Your Primary Paths to Emotional Connection

All roads are not created equally. Freeways move lots of traffic fast; country lanes often guide just a single, meandering car.

Similarly, all pathways to emotional connection with your audience are not created equally. Some paths are more effective and more commonly used to connect emotionally. Let’s review these superhighways from which you can create the pathos of your presentation.

1. Themes and Points
2. Words
3. Analogies and Metaphors
4. Stories
5. Humor
6. Visuals
7. Delivery Techniques

#1: Select Emotional Themes and Points

You always have choices to make about which points to include in the time allotted. Be sure that some of them carry emotional power.

Example: Suppose you have identified fifteen reasons why your audience should consider public speaking training. Unfortunately, your short speech only allows you to discuss three or four of them. Which do you choose? “Conquer your public speaking fear” probably evokes stronger emotions than “Learn to speak with more precision.”

#2: Choose Words which Add Emotional Emphasis

Some words are emotionally neutral, while some are emotionally charged. Exercise judgment to select the words which fit the emotional tone that works to your advantage.

Example: Consider the difference in words used to label a suicide bomber on opposing sides of a political war. What emotion does the label “terrorist” evoke? What emotion does the label “martyr” evoke? Which one would best complement your speech?

#3: Use Rich Analogies and Metaphors

Analogies, metaphors, and other figures of speech not only make your speech more interesting, but often allow you to make an emotional connection by tapping into emotions already felt by your audience.

Example: If you speak about gang violence, you might plainly state that “We have a problem in our city…” On the other hand, you might say “We have a cancer in our city…” The latter analogy draws on your audience’s pre-existing feelings about cancer, and makes them want to eradicate the cause!

#4: Tell Stories

Stories are often the quickest path to the greatest emotional connection with your audience. Carefully crafted stories allow you to evoke any of a wide range of emotions. This may explain why stories are often the most memorable components of a speech.

#5: Use Humor

Humor is closely related to storytelling, because you usually arrive at humor through stories. Nonetheless, humor merits special mention. Humor in a presentation evokes emotions such as joy and surprise, and often triggers secondary emotions such as calmness and friendship. If your audience is laughing, they are having fun. If they are having fun, they are happy to be listening to you and they are attentive. As an added boost, humor makes your audience like you (at least for a moment), and that boosts your ethos too.

Nearly every presentation would benefit from more humor. How can you add humor to yours?

#6: Connect through Visuals

Maybe you have slides with photographs. Maybe you have a prop. Either way, a concrete visual element opens many more emotional pathways than abstract words alone.

Examples: Consider the following pairs, and ask yourself which creates the stronger emotional impact:

• Saying that “smoking damages lung tissue” versus Showing a slide with a photograph of tar-like lung tissue
• Claiming that cords from window blinds pose a risk to children versus Showing (with a prop) how the cords might strangle a baby doll.

#7: Model the Emotion with Your Delivery Techniques

The emotional effectiveness of stories, humor, visuals, and other “content” tools often depends greatly on your delivery. Great delivery magnifies emotions; poor delivery nullifies them.

Example: Words from your mouth or slides on a screen may induce sadness in your audience, but the effect is multiplied when combined with sadness on your face, in your posture, and in your voice.

Additional Paths to Develop Pathos in Your Speech

Now that you are familiar with the core pathos tools, we can sample some of the additional tools at the disposal of a skilled speaker. Many of these build on top of the core building blocks above.

#8: Analyze Your Audience

Without doing any audience analysis at all, you always know two things:

1. Everyone in your audience is human.
2. Most humans share many emotional triggers.

As a result, you can always achieve moderate success applying the first seven tools.

But to hit a pathos home run, you’ve got to analyze your audience. Are they old or young? Technical or non-technical? Male or female? Rich or poor? Liberal or conservative? These and many other factors will impact which emotional triggers will have the strongest impact. Do the analysis!

#9: Evoke Curiosity with Marketing Materials

When your audience feels an emotion, they are motivated to act. If the emotion is pity, they are motivated to address the situation (e.g. perhaps by donating money to your charity).

In a similar way, if you make your audience curious through your marketing materials, they are motivated to act. How does one act on curiosity?

• Show up to the presentation.
• Pay attention.
• Take notes.
• Engage with the speaker and follow along.

So, make your audience curious. Include a bold claim or a startling statistic. (Of course, you need to follow up in your presentation.) Focus on the benefits to be realized by your audience, and their curiosity will attract them to your speech.

#10: Evoke Surprise (in the Introduction and elsewhere)

A great way to connect immediately with your audience is to start with a surprise. I admit there’s no logical reason to suggest that a speaker who starts with a surprise will deliver a more valuable presentation. But, we’re not talking logic here (that’s the next article on logos). A surprise gets your audience excited. Getting them excited makes them listen.

Surprise can be effective elsewhere, particularly as the length of your speech grows. Like curiosity, your audience is motivated to act on the surprise. How? They try to resolve how this surprising element fits with the rest of the presentation. To do that, they have to listen.

Note that I’m not talking about deliberately confusing your audience. Surprise is planned, and is usually followed quickly by an explanation. Confusion, on the other hand, results from poor planning, and usually lasts beyond the end of your presentation, at least until the Q&A.

#11: Use Vivid, Sensory Words

Tool #2 above advised the use of emotional words. One way to do this is to concentrate on concrete, vivid, sensory words. When you use sensory words, your audience feels emotions they have associated with those words.

Example: When you mention “the touch of your father’s flannel shirt” or “the aroma of your grandmother’s kitchen”, you’ve done more than just mention fabric and smells. You have evoked emotions which, depending on your audience, probably include loving memories of childhood.

#12: Be Authentic

Remember that the goal of pathos is to connect with the audience and share emotions with them.

To share an emotion, you’ve got to feel it too.

Pathos is not about tugging emotional strings as if you were a puppeteer. You get zero marks for that. Actually, you get negative marks for that, because your ethos gets destroyed when the audience realizes you are toying with them.

Be honest. Share your presentation in a way that your audience will feel as passionately as you feel.

#13: Match Your Vocal Delivery to the Emotion

Vocal delivery is one clear clue to how you feel about what you are saying. Your tone, volume, pace, and other vocal qualities should mirror your emotions.

Examples:

• Anger might be accompanied by a loud, defiant voice.
• Sadness or despair might call for a softer voice.
• Optimism or excitement might be matched by a quickened pace.

#14: Match Your Gestures to the Emotion

Your body is another clue for the audience to gauge your emotions. If you are telling a story about love or joy, your body shouldn’t look like a mannequin. If you are revealing your own disappointment in a story, your shoulders should probably droop, and you shouldn’t be smiling.

Some speakers find it difficult to do this because they are speaking about past events where the emotions have dulled with the memories over time. The emotions were felt then, but aren’t as easy to summon now. You’ve got to show the audience how it felt in the moment. Remember that they are hearing this story for the first time.

#15: Connect with Your Eyes

Eye contact isn’t a scorecard. Your aim isn’t to collect check-marks from each person who you look at over the course of your presentation.

Meaningful eye contact is about connecting with one person at a time. Your eyes should express your frustration, your contempt, or your joy. In the ideal case, the person you’re looking at will mirror your emotion back to you. That’s connection!

#16: Eliminate Physical Barriers to Connect with Your Audience

In most speaking situations, your goal should be to reduce barriers between you and your audience. Get out from behind the lectern. Move closer to the audience. Ask them to sit in the seats near the front.

The closer you are to your audience, the more personal your presentation feels for them. The more personal it feels, the greater your chance for emotional connection. For much more on this topic, read Nick Morgan’s excellent article: How to Connect With Your Audience by Moving Closer.

#17: Eliminate Competing Emotions in the Environment

There usually are a myriad of competing elements in and around the room which are evoking emotions in your audience. For instance, a marching band practicing outside might be annoying your audience. If this annoyance is strong, it may prevent you from evoking competing emotions with your presentation.

The solution is to take charge and eliminate or minimize these causes whenever you can so that your audience can focus on you.

Examples:

• Hunger and biological needs create strong emotions. Take appropriate breaks if you delivering lengthy training.
• Excessive noise, temperature extremes (either too hot or too cold), or poor lighting make your audience uncomfortable and perhaps even angry at you or the organizer. Do whatever you can to optimize the conditions.
• Speaking over your allotted time may make your audience nervous or anxious if they’ve got to pick up their kids. Stick to your time bounds.
• Hecklers — and your response to them — can evoke many emotions. Learn how to handle them smoothly and professionally.

#18: Avoid Tripping Emotional Land Mines

Situations where you aren’t familiar with your audience are potentially dangerous. Perhaps you’ve been invited to speak at a company which has just experienced massive layoffs. Perhaps you’ve been invited to speak to an audience of a different culture. In either case, you’ve got to be careful not to say something (or gesture something) which accidentally triggers an emotion that you had not intended.

If you’re lucky, you’ll just say something that provokes unexpected laughter. If you’re not, you’ll say something that deeply offends your audience to the degree that they tune you out completely.

Your best defense against this is extensive audience analysis. Do your homework. Sometimes, it may still happen despite your best efforts. In this case, it’s important that you are actively reading your audience. If you have evoked an unintended emotion, you can usually tell. It’s wise to address it and, if necessary, apologize for the unintended offense.

What do you think?

The methods listed above are far from exhaustive. There are many other ways to connect emotionally with your audience as a speaker.

What other techniques do you use? Please share your ideas in the comments.

Next in This Series…

In the next article of this series, we’ll focus on logos, your logical argument.

Similar Articles You May Like... What is Pathos and Why is it Critical for Speakers? Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking Book Review: Made to Stick How to Connect With Your Audience by Moving Closer Connect With Your Audience: Don’t Hide Your Emotions When Speaking Electrify Your Audience with a Shocking Speech Opening

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

American psychologist William James wrote:

The emotions aren’t always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.

Emotions — whether fear or love, pity or anger — are powerful motivators for your audience. An audience emotionally stimulated in the right way is more likely to accept your claims and act on your requests. By learning how to make emotional appeals, you greatly improve your effectiveness as a speaker.

In this article of the Ethos, Pathos, and Logos series, we turn our attention to pathos, and the role of emotion in persuasive public speaking.

What is Pathos?

The word pathos is derived from the ancient Greek word for “suffering” or “experience”.

Think about other words from the same root:

• Pathogen and pathology describe the source of a patient’s disease or suffering.
• Empathy is the ability to share the emotions of another person.
• Sympathy describes a similar ability to share emotions, usually negative emotions such as pain or sadness.
• Antipathy equates with strong, negative emotions toward another.
• Something that is pathetic is likely to arouse either compassion or contempt.

All of these related words focus on the concept of shared experience or shared emotions.

As a speaker, your goal is to create a shared emotional experience with your audience. Pathos describes your ability to evoke audience emotions and strategically connect these emotions with elements of your speech.

Pathos: Evoking Emotions In Your Audience

This leads to the obvious question — what emotions can you evoke?

The simple answer is “all of them,” but that isn’t too helpful.

There are a numerous theories of emotion. Philosophers and psychologists have attempted to itemize and categorize emotions into convenient buckets for thousands of years.

According to translator George Kennedy, Aristotle provides “the earliest systematic discussion of human psychology” in On Rhetoric. Aristotle identified the following seven sets of emotions, with each pair representing opposites:

• Anger and Calmness
• Friendship and Enmity
• Fear and Confidence
• Shame and Shamelessness
• Kindness and Unkindness
• Pity and Indignation
• Envy and Emulation

By comparison, twentieth century psychologist Robert Plutchik proposed a set of eight basic emotions along with eight advanced emotions. He, too, arranges them in opposite pairs:

• Basic Emotions
  • Joy — Sadness
  • Trust — Disgust
  • Fear — Anger
  • Surprise — Anticipation
• Advanced Emotions
  • Optimism — Disappointment
  • Love — Remorse
  • Submission — Contempt
  • Awe — Aggressiveness

Many others have offered different categories of emotions.

It isn’t important to find the correct classification of emotions; indeed, there may not be a correct classification. Instead, the goals of a persuasive speaker are to:

1. be aware of the wide range of emotions,
2. decide which emotions to evoke, and
3. learn how these emotions can be evoked in your audience.

Pathos: Why Evoke Audience Emotions at All?

If evoking a particular emotion was the final result, it would quite a useless endeavor. Randomly making the audience feel anger or joy or fear or hope will not, in itself, get you anywhere. Emotions do not persuade in solitude.

Aristotle knew that the emotion must be linked with your speech arguments. For example, Aristotle defines anger and describes what causes someone to become angry. He then encourages speakers to associate that anger with one’s opponent:

[...] it is clear that it might be needful in a speech to put [the audience] into a state of mind of those who are inclined to anger and show one’s opponents as responsible for those things that are the causes of the anger and that they are the sort of people against whom anger is directed.

In other words, make your audience angry, and direct that anger at your opponent. If your audience is angry at your opponent, they will be more receptive to hear your ideas.

Just as having high ethos makes your audience more likely to be persuaded, pathos can also make your audience more susceptible to being persuaded. By making an emotional connection with your audience:

• Your audience will be more likely to understand your perspective (via the shared emotion or experience).
• Your audience will be more likely to accept your claims.
• Your audience will be more likely to act on your call-to-action.

Positive Emotions versus Negative Emotions

Are all emotions equal? In other words, will any emotion do? Will my audience adopt my views equally if I make them feel surprise as when I make them feel anger?

No. The evoked emotion must be appropriate to the context. In general, you want the audience to feel the same emotions that you feel about your arguments and the opposing arguments.

One convenient way to see this is by looking at the difference between evoking “positive” emotions versus “negative” emotions.

• Positive emotions (e.g. surprise, joy, awe) should be associated with your claims, or your “side” of the persuasive argument.
• Negative emotions (e.g. fear, contempt, disappointment) should be associated with your opponent’s claims.
  • Sometimes, you may have a human opponent (e.g. a political debate).
  • Other times, your opponent may be the status quo which you are seeking to change.

Why is Pathos Critical for Speakers?

In summary:

• If you utilize pathos well, your audience will feel the same emotions that you do. Your audience will feel the pain, the joy, the hope, and the fear of the characters in your stories. They will no longer be passive listeners. They will be motivated to act.
• If you do not utilize pathos well, your audience will not be motivated to disrupt the status quo. They will be more likely to find fault in your logical arguments (logos, the topic for a future article). They will not feel invested in your cause.

How do you Develop Pathos?

In this article we defined what pathos is and why it is important, but there are still several major questions:

• How do you develop it?
• Is it your speech content that creates pathos, or your delivery?
• What are the most effective strategies you can employ?

These questions are addressed in the next article of this series — 18 Paths to Pathos:
How to Connect with Your Audience.

Similar Articles You May Like... 18 Paths to Pathos: How to Connect with Your Audience Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking Book Review: Made to Stick How to Connect With Your Audience by Moving Closer Connect With Your Audience: Don’t Hide Your Emotions When Speaking Electrify Your Audience with a Shocking Speech Opening

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

Six Minutes weekend reviews bring the best public speaking articles to you.

This review features topics including:

• PowerPoint and the Rule of Thirds;
• new public speaking books;
• persuasive techniques;
• training session tips;
• creating memorable story characters;
• effective use of pauses;
• new features in PowerPoint 2010;
• dealing with hecklers;
• and more!

From the Six Minutes Archives

One Year Ago from Six Minutes…

• How to Improve Your PowerPoint Slides with the Rule of Thirds
  Design tips for non-designers! The rule of thirds is easy to apply, and will make your slides much more attractive.

Two Years Ago from Six Minutes…

• How to Practice Your Presentation
  Part of the speech preparation series, this article shows why practice is essential.

Resources for Speakers – Public Speaking Books

Check out these recently released public speaking and communications books:

• 365 Powerful Ways to Influence by Donald Hendon
• The ABC's of Speaking by Thom Singer
• Body Language: 7 Easy Lessons to Master the Silent Language by James Borg
• The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics: The Dos and Don'ts of Presenting Data, Facts, and Figures by Dona M. Wong
• Delivering Training Workshops: Pfeiffer Essential Guides to Training Basics by Janis Fisher Chan

Speechwriting

• Nick Morgan delivers a 7-article series on persuasive techniques.

1. Phrase your arguments so that your listeners can hear them.
2. Have a clear goal in mind.
3. Break your communication down into problems and solutions.
4. Deal in stories, facts, and tropes.
5. Make sure your communication is articulate. Is there a real alternative? Is the idea consequential? Do the words shock but not surprise?
6. Cut through the clutter of information overload by dealing with safety issues.
7. Be willing to confess something.

• Diane DiResta offers 13 tips for designing a fun and memorable training session.

1. Understand how people learn.
2. Tell stories.
3. Use props.
4. Let them teach you.
5. Get physical.
6. Play games.
7. Organize creatively.
8. Pair up.
9. Get them moving.
10. Give them aha’s.
11. Provide download time.
12. Use music.
13. Get visual.

• Doug Stevenson details how to create memorable characters in your stories.

The way you describe your characters, physically, allows your audience to form a mental image of them. [...]

Don’t stop with, “My friend Mark was supposed to pick me up at the airport.” Go deeper. For example: “My friend Mark is about 6 feet, 3 inches tall and about 150 pounds. We used to call him “Daddy Long Legs”… with a mustache. He was a real string bean of a guy who worked as a computer tech  – a real nerd, an absolute genius with computers. So Mark, this lanky, nerdy guy, was supposed to pick me up at the airport and bring me home after my long trip.”

• Denise Graveline urges you to be bold in your speechwriting.

[...] you need to be bold to be an effective speaker. Respectful and qualified won’t help you create that vital connection with your audience, whether you’re in a meeting, a presentation or giving a speech.

Delivery Techniques

• Craig Senior discusses effective use of pauses.

What you are doing during pauses:

• listening with the audience (observing them)
• giving the audience time to absorb and respond
• breathing
• thinking
• moving
• getting a prop

What the audience is doing during pauses:

• thinking
• feeling
• laughing
• listening with you (observing you)

• Kathy Reiffenstein offers tips for speaking with a teleprompter.

1. Read the script through several times without the teleprompter.
2. Speak naturally
3. Know your teleprompter operator
4. Have a few people in the audience while you are rehearsing
5. Take a hard copy of your speech with you

• Kate Peters paradoxically offers 10 ways to destroy your voice.

1. Smoke.
2. Scream.
3. Avoid drinking water.
4. Pitch your voice as low as you can get it and force the sound out.

[...]

Visual Aids

• Jan Schultink contrasts two charts drawn from the same data to show how to use visuals to support your persuasive argument.
• Echo Swinford lists 65 new features in PowerPoint 2010.
  That’s a lot of new features. How will you take advantage of them?
• John Zimmer criticizes the 1-6-6 “rule” for PowerPoint.

• I have also seen this rule called the 1-5-5 Rule and the 1-7-7 Rule, with necessary changes to the numbers of bullet points and words per bullet point. I have chosen the middle ground.
• The “Rule” is not a rule at all. It is nonsense.

A recent satirical Dilbert comic has gone up on my office door:

Speaker Habits

• Lisa Braithwaite offers suggestions to overcome your tendency to say too much.

1. The most critical factor is timing yourself.
2. Create a time cushion when you practice.
3. Keep your eye on the clock.

• Jim Anderson studies (article 1 and  article 2) how to deal with hecklers.

The best way to deal with a heckler is to do your best to prevent them from becoming a heckler in the first place. A heckler can show up in any audience and so part of your preparation to give a speech, you need to spend some time taking steps to defuse the things that might set a heckler off.

• Olivia Mitchell also writes about how to handle hecklers.

1. Manage your own emotional state.
2. Let the heckler have their say.
3. Use reflective listening before you respond.
4. Respond.
5. [...]

Similar Articles You May Like... Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2010-02-06] Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2010-01-02] Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2009-12-05] Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2009-11-07] Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2009-10-10] Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2009-09-05]

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

Six Minutes weekend reviews bring the best public speaking articles to you.

This review features topics including:

• frequently asked questions about Toastmasters;
• tactics for persuasive speaking;
• speechwriting tips;
• storytelling help from a Google ad;
• Obama’s State of the Union address;
• hands in the pockets;
• visual clichés;
• Sarah Palin and notes on her hands;
• the believability of Tiger Woods’ apology;
• and more!

From the Six Minutes Archives

One Year Ago from Six Minutes…

• Toastmasters: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?
  Answers to the most frequently asked questions about the world’s largest public speaking organization.

Two Years Ago from Six Minutes…

• Electrify Your Audience with a Shocking Speech Opening
  A speech opening example which packs power into just 19 words.

Recently on Six Minutes…

• Book Review — Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
  A review of the bestselling book which enables speechwriters to craft memorable speeches.
• 15 Tactics to Establish Ethos: Examples for Persuasive Speaking
  Practical tips that you can apply to make your audience more likely to be persuaded by your presentation.
• Average Speakers Suck. Don’t Be Average
  The average speaker is largely ineffective, but any speaker can improve their impact as a speaker through hard work and practice.

Speechwriting

• Cynthia Starks shares how to write a speech that matters.
  Click the PDF speech transcript which she attaches at the end of her article. It’s worth a thorough read.

My message to you today is simple – speeches matter.

In the political world, they can win votes, start wars or inspire a generation.

In the business world, they can attract customers, boost sales, motivate employees, influence investors, position individuals as thought-leaders and companies as pace-setters.

If you want to communicate passion, clarity of purpose, and a call to action, nothing beats a speech. Nothing else gives your message a human face.

• Lisa Braithwaite rates the effectiveness of the Google “Parisian Love” ad (aired during the Super Bowl) against the recommendations from Made to Stick.

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Terry Gault delves into the elements of effective stories, also commenting on the Google ad.

• Reveal something personal about yourself, the presenter. What are you really like? What is the company really like?
• Use humility and vulnerability to build empathy. Don’t relate a personal success; instead, describe a personal difficulty so the audience will empathize with you.
• Choose an incident or emotional experience – a common reference point – with which the audience can identify.
• Develop characters for your story and make them come to life. Let the audience see the emotions of the characters in your story.

• Nick Morgan critiques Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.

This new tone represents a remarkable departure for President Obama.  The cynical would say, a new speechwriter got the SOTU assignment.  But presidents control their rhetoric, and they pay particular attention to the State of the Union, since it’s the one speech that everyone listens to each year.  So the new tone is deliberate.

Delivery Techniques

• Laura Bergells criticizes the “hands in your pockets” posture.

It’s the lackluster “hands in pockets” gesture made popular by the slacker dufus in those “I’m a PC” commercials. He’s the guy whose posture represents disinterest. He has nothing to do, so he stands with his hands in his pockets, listening to what the more entertaining fellow has to say.

“Hands in Pockets” might be appropriate during the “Q” part of “Q and A”. It can signal, “I’m open to listening to you”.

But it’s not a polite posture to adopt while speaking.

Visual Aids

• Jan Schultink (via Nikki Smith-Morgan) points to 101 visual clichés.
  How many have you used?

The light bulb

The tape measure

The crystal ball

The stopwatch

The baton

…

Speaker Habits

• Stephanie Scotti suggests the S.T.A.T. formula for speaker introductions.

Speaker — Why this speaker?

Topic — Why is this topic being discussed?

Audience — Why is this topic important to this audience?

Time — Why this subject at this time?

Sarah Palin and Notes on her Palms

First, the video showing Sarah Palin use of notes written on her hand:

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Jerry Weissman discusses the media debate about Sarah Palin’s palm reading, shown below.

Nancy Benac of the Associated Press summed up the sharp exchange on the subject, “Obama’s critics point to his podium and teleprompter as evidence of [his] disconnect. Palin’s critics point to her flesh-and-ink crib notes as one more sign she’s a lightweight. Or maybe all these two have shown is that they’re human and need a little help remembering key points.”

• Scott Berkun puts the focus back where it belongs.

I’m all for criticizing speakers for the quality of their ideas. Ask if the points they make are clear, and smart, and fair, and useful.  Consider if they seem to believe what they say and passionately care about being useful to their audience. These are the questions that matter. Few speakers are able to do this with or without teleprompters or crib sheets.

Getting caught up in the trivia of props and prompters is a a complete distraction. I wish it would stop.

Critiques of the Tiger Woods Apology

View Tiger Woods’ apology statement yourself:

Click here to view the embedded video.

• Bert Decker assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Tiger’s apology.

Although it was painful for Tiger Woods to have his giant size ’statement’ this morning, the key question is: was he believable? Oh, we want facts (is Elin leaving? when is he returning to golf? is he staying in rehab?, etc) but that information we could get from his web page, where he has announced everything else. We want to see him. We want to hear and ‘feel’ him to judge for ourselves.

• Theresa Zagnoli dissects the Tiger Woods apology statement.

As a communication expert, the Tiger Woods media statement today provided much to dissect. As a student of human behavior, there is much to discuss. As a human being, there is a great deal to ponder.

Similar Articles You May Like... Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2010-03-06] Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2010-02-06] Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2010-01-15] Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2010-01-02] Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2009-12-19] Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2009-12-05]

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

This article is the latest of a series of public speaking book reviews here on Six Minutes.

• What’s Inside?
• The Price
• What I Loved
• How could it be better?
• What Others Think
• Verdict

What’s Inside?

The core concept of Made to Stick is that your ideas are more likely to be memorable if you communicate them with six principles in mind:

1. Simple
2. Unexpected
3. Concrete
4. Credible
5. Emotional
6. Stories

The authors explore each of these principles in depth, both:

• Illuminating why it is important for memorable messages, and
• Demonstrating how to apply it through a stream of case studies taken from advertising, corporate strategies, movies, inspirational stories, and urban legends.

They also introduce the concept of “The Curse of Knowledge” — knowing something too well so that this knowledge inhibits our ability to communicate the essence of it to our audience. They portray this curse of knowledge as a villain, and address how to overcome this self-defeating phenomenon.

The Price

At the time of writing this review, you can get this hardcover book (291 pages) for only $17.16 from amazon.com. This is 34% off the list price.

Reviews are overwhelmingly positive:

4 Things I Love about Made to Stick

The four things I liked most about Made to Stick are:

1. 100% Relevant to Your Speeches and Presentations

It’s not marketed as a book for speakers, but everything here applies to every presentation you’ll do.

I’m already thinking about how I could have improved past presentations, and how I can make future presentations better.

However, the best part is that the book is also 100% relevant to all other communication that you do, whether it be reports, emails, conversations, meetings, etc.

2. Well-written and organized

The book has just 6 chapters (one per principle), plus a prologue and epilogue. The roadmap is clear and easily understood.

This is not a dense book with nothing but theories. Dozens of concrete examples (or hundreds?) bring emotional stories to life and show how to put the ideas into action. Further, there is wide-ranging variety in the types of anecdotes used, before-and-after studies, and other methods.

3. No Jargon

You don’t need a psychology degree or marketing background to understand any of the concepts. Everything is written clearly and in terms that anyone can understand. There’s really only one term used which may be new to some readers — schema — but it is essential to the book’s message, and they explain it well. (Or, perhaps since I already knew the term, I am suffering from the Curse of Knowledge?)

4. Extras

In addition to the voluminous citations and index, the appendix also includes a very handy 5-page “easy reference guide” which summarizes the entire book in the type of shorthand a speaker might use for cue cards when delivering a keynote. Just the essential details. This is a very useful reference that I’ll refer to often.

For example, consider the follow passage which summarizes part of chapter one. Each of the numbers (which I added) corresponds to a story or set of stories used to illustrate their ideas. As I type them in, I recall each story and its lesson.

1. Simple

Find the Core

[1] Commander’s Intent. [2] Determine the single most important thing: “THE low-fare airline.” [3] Inverted pyramid: Don’t bury the lead. [4] The pain of decision paralysis. [5] Beat decision paralysis through relentless prioritization: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Clinic: [6] Sun exposure. [7] Names, names, names.

How could it be better?

1. Ditch the SUCCESs Acronym

Mnemonics devices are powerful; I’ve used them myself often. However, I cringe when I see any process or framework which is framed as an acronym. In forcing the six principles into the S.U.C.C.E.S.s acronym, I think the authors left more accurate terms out. For example:

• Although emotion is a key ingredient of communication, chapter five is really more about relevance than emotion.
• Chapter two might have been better framed as surprising (or curious) instead of unexpected.
• The authors admit that core might have been a better term than simple for chapter one.
• Stories aren’t really on par with the other five concepts, but rather a way to deliver all five in a convenient package. (The authors point this out near the end of chapter six.) However, they are presented as a parallel concept to the other five.

2. More Before-and-After Examples

The book already has many before-and-after examples where the authors examine the before (non-sticky) message and compare it to the after (stickier) message.

But, I’m greedy. I’d like even more examples built around this template. I find it much easier to see how to get to the sticky message when we have the non-sticky message for context.

What Others Think

Barry Schwartz, Washington Post:

I find the Heaths’ analysis convincing and their recommendations quite helpful. I think I will be a better teacher if I keep SUCCES in mind when preparing materials for my classes.

Jessie Scanlon, BusinessWeek:

The clear writing and myriad examples make the book highly readable, and overall, it scores well on the SUCCESs checklist: It’s simple, includes unexpected ideas, offers concrete examples, draws on credible sources, covers a subject readers have an inherent interest in, and tells some good stories along the way.

Guy Kawasaki:

My prediction for Made to Stick is that it will join The Tipping Point and Built to Last as a must-read for business people. [...] A warning though: If you read this book, you’ll revamp a lot of your marketing material (as you probably should).

Brent Dykes, PowerPoint Ninja:

I strongly recommend this book as it will ensure the foundation of your PowerPoint presentations — your central message or idea — is solid. Not even PowerPoint ninjutsu can save a weak idea or message.

Verdict

I finished reading this book only two days ago, and I’ve already encouraged several people I know to read it. Now I’m encouraging you.

Your ability to communicate your message in a clear, impactful, and memorable way determines your success as a speaker. Made to Stick is the best book I have read which focuses on this key skill.

Highly recommended for every speaker.

Similar Articles You May Like... Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking Book Review: Advanced Presentations by Design by Andrew Abela Book Review: The Story Factor (Annette Simmons) 18 Paths to Pathos: How to Connect with Your Audience What is Pathos and Why is it Critical for Speakers? Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2010-03-06]

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

Have you taught a college course in public speaking?

Which textbook did you use, and would you recommend it?

I’m interested to hear all your recommendations, the good and the bad.

In particular, perhaps you can help out a Six Minutes subscriber from Switzerland who teaches public speaking and writes:

Have you ever taught public speaking to college students? If so, do you have a recommended book? I am using a book right now (Hogan et. al, Public Speaking and Civic Engagement) that I am 50% happy with, but find the focus too American. My class is full of international, mixed-culture kids and they can’t relate to all the U.S. references.  I have used Lucas [Ed. The Art of Public Speaking?], you probably know his work, but find it too practical oriented and not academically very challenging. So I am searching for a “global public speaking” book. Any recommendations?

If we get a number of responses, I’ll compile them together in a future article.

Your responses can go here in the comments. Thank you!

Similar Articles You May Like... Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2010-03-06] Book Review: Made to Stick Public Speaking Tips: Weekend Review [2010-02-06] Win a Book! Share Your Public Speaking Confessions Book Review: Confessions of a Public Speaker (Scott Berkun) Book Review: Universal Principles of Design

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

So do all of your colleagues with average presentation skills.

Let’s see why this is so…

Cookies and the Cookie Police

Suppose you are baking cookies. After mixing up the dough, you scoop up a bit with your fingers, roll it into a ball, and plop it on the cookie sheet. Repeat this 50 times, and you’ve got an oven full of cookies. Repeat this 500 times, and you’ve got a freezer full of cookies — or, perhaps, enough for a bake sale.

Now, suppose that you were being investigated by the Homemade Cookie Police. After you plop each cookie onto the sheet, they carefully lift it up and weigh it. For all 500 cookies, they record the weight. When they finish, they prepare a chart (presumably for their PowerPoint presentation back at Headquarters).

If you are a normal human being, the chart would look something like this:

• Most of the cookies would have a weight very close to the average, give or take a few tenths of a gram.
• Small numbers of cookies would be either very small or very large.

The very small cookies might burn in the oven, and the very large cookies might be raw, but the vast majority of cookies would be delicious!

Humans and the Bell Curve

Why did the cookie weight/frequency chart turn out the way it did? Because you’re human!

You may have recognized the shape of the chart as the Bell Curve. (You might know it as a normal distribution, or some other name.)  It has many fascinating applications in mathematics and statistics, but perhaps the most fascinating is that if you consider any variable in a large population, the histogram (the chart of values versus the count) tends to follow the Bell Curve.

In the case of cookies, the weight is a variable because you aren’t a robot.

As another example, consider adult heights. The average height for North American men is about 69 ½ inches. (North American women are about 64 ½ inches.) Height is a variable, and the distribution of heights follows the Bell Curve.

• A large majority of male adults have heights around 69 ½ inches, perhaps a little above or a little below.
• There are, of course, some really tall people and some really short people. Relatively speaking, however, there are fewer of these people.

When it comes to height, being average is good. In fact, it’s preferred. Clothes, cars, and airplane seats are all designed for you. To be extremely short or extremely tall means a life of physical inconvenience.

As another example, consider a sport like golf and let’s look at how well people can hit the golf ball.

• Professional golfers can really smoke it, but there aren’t many professional golfers.
• Some people can barely hit it at all (perhaps they are too frail or maybe just too clumsy to swing a club). There are only a few of these people, too.
• The vast majority of us are in the middle. We’re just skilled enough to avoid injuring ourselves.

When it comes to golf, we’d like to be able to hit the ball at a professional level, but it’s okay to be average. Being average is mediocre, and that’s fine for golf. It’s understandable because most of us never received any golf lessons. Your golf skills are only used a few times per year (or in a lifetime), and your career success doesn’t depend much on your ability with a golf club.

Public Speaking and the Bell Curve

It’s a little more complex to quantify presentation skills, but suppose for a moment that you could. (Perhaps the number of minutes you can speak without anyone getting bored? Maybe the number of listeners who are motivated by your call-to-action?)

On the high end, you’ve got Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, and Steve Jobs.

On the low end, you’ve got hermits and people who cannot communicate at all.

In the middle, you have the majority of people with average presentation skills. Is this good? Or is this bad?

Here’s the key to this article: The line between being an effective communicator and an ineffective communicator is not down the middle of the chart. It’s over to the right. That’s where you want to be. That’s where you need to be.

Statistically speaking, you can suck and still be an average speaker. Most of your colleagues are. This is the Death by PowerPoint abyss. This is the 15 filler words per minute zone. This is the “What the heck is this speaker talking about?” zone.

• Presentation skills are not cookies.
  Chocolate chips won’t compensate for you being an average speaker. Your audience spends a lifetime in meetings listening to people who are average speakers and wishing they were somewhere else.
• Presentation skills are not like height.
  The world is not designed for average speakers to excel. People do not rally around you if you have an average ability to convey your ideas.
• Presentation skills are not like golf.
  It’s not okay to be a mediocre. Your communication skills matter!

To Be a Good Speaker, You Can’t Be Average

Why is the average speaker so bad? Like golf, most people in the world never receive any formal communications training, and they never pursue any informal training either. We all pay the price. Think of the last 50 presentations you have attended. How many kept you interested throughout? Ten? Five? Fewer than five?

The small fraction of the population who strive to improve their skills (that’s you if you are reading this article) has a huge advantage.  If your communication skills aren’t already above average, they will be. And above-average communication skills give you a huge advantage in life. Your ideas get communicated and noticed. You excel in interviews. You are seen as a leader.

The good news is that anyone can improve their skills with dedication, effort, and time. Read Six Minutes. Read other speaking blogs. Read communication books. Join a Toastmasters club. Volunteer to speak whenever you can. Practice. Practice. Practice.

Don’t be an average communicator. Be effective.

Similar Articles You May Like... Book Review: Confessions of a Public Speaker (Scott Berkun) Love the Process and Improve Your Speaking Skills 8 Faulty Speaker Assumptions and How to Fix Them How to Deliver Group Presentations: The Unified Team Approach How to Deliver the Talk of Your Life The 7 Deadly Sins of Public Speaking

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

Your speaking ethos is critical to ensure that your audience is present, listening, and open to being persuaded by your ideas.

But, how do you maximize your ethos for a given speech and a given audience? Is ethos fixed before you open your mouth? Is there anything you can do during a speech that makes a difference?

This article shows you practical tactics you can employ to establish and increase your ethos.

Definition of Ethos

The previous article in the Ethos, Pathos, and Logos series defined ethos along four dimensions:

1. Trustworthiness
   Does your audience believes you are a good person who can be trusted to tell the truth?
2. Similarity
   Does your audience identify with you?
3. Authority
   Do you have formal or informal authority relative to your audience?
4. Reputation
   How much expertise does your audience think you have in this field?

We will refer to these four dimensions throughout this article as we link practical actions back to their roots. Look for them in parentheses, like this: (Similiarity). When a certain tactic applies to all four dimensions of ethos, we’ll denote it like this: (All)

Remember that these dimensions are not always independent; rather, they are often intertwined.

Caution: Ethos is not an exact measure

Consider the difference between your weight and your overall health.

• Weight is precise. Yesterday, you weighted 121 pounds. Today, you weigh 120.5 pounds. If you burn 3500 calories through exercise, you’ll drop one pound in weight. Last week, you weighed three pounds less than your sister.
• Health, on the other hand, is not precise. Your health cannot be described by a single number. Still, you can make some assertions. You can be pretty sure that one person is healthier than another. Further, you can be confident that certain actions will improve your health (e.g. exercising more; eating spinach) and other actions will damage your health (e.g. smoking;  eating cake).

Ethos is not like weight. You can’t say “Oh, my ethos score with this audience is 165 today. Yippee!” (Well, you can say it, but it would be meaningless.)

Instead, ethos is like your physical health. You probably have less ethos than Steve Jobs at a technology convention. Having come to this epiphany, you should also realize that there are certain actions which improve your ethos, and certain actions that damage your ethos. Examples of these actions will be the focus of the remainder of this article.

How to Improve Ethos – Long Before Your Speech

Ethos is about your audience’s perception of you, and this perception can be formed over many months or years, or perhaps over many past speeches. So, we’ll first examine things you can do in the long run to improve your ethos.

#1: Be a Good Person (Trustworthiness)

Let’s start with an easy one. Be a good person, do good things, and think good thoughts. There are far more important reasons to follow this mantra than to gain speaking ethos. Nonetheless, your ethos will grow. The positive effect you have on those around you will spread, and will become known to your audience.

Example: How much ethos does Tiger Woods have (in the wake of the fidelity scandal) in terms of trustworthiness?

#2: Develop Deep Expertise in Topics You Speak About (Reputation)

People are busy. (There’s a news flash!) There are many things competing for their attention, and there are often many other speakers competing for their attention. Why will they choose to listen to you speak? Your expertise will often differentiate you from competing speakers.

Example: Suppose an audience has two options for concurrent sessions at a conference:

1. Speaker A has very interesting ideas, but only 2 years of work in a related field.
2. Speaker B has written two best-selling books in the field, and is a sought after consultant with 15 years of experience.

Who is the audience going to choose?

There’s a corollary for this rule too. Stick to speaking about topics for which you have deep expertise.

#3: Market Yourself (Reputation)

Developing the expertise doesn’t earn you any ethos if you don’t market yourself and let the world know about it. You’ve got to take charge of your personal brand and make sure that it’s a brand that emphasizes the qualities you want to emphasize.

#4: Analyze Your Audience (Similarity)

Thorough audience analysis is critical for improving your ethos. (It’s critical for improving your pathos and logos too… but that’s a topic for another article. Stay tuned.)

Audience analysis will reveal valuable clues that you can use to adapt yourself to your audience. Seek to find common traits that you share and highlight them. For other traits, find ways to adapt your language, your mannerisms, your dress, your PowerPoint visuals, or your stories to match the audience.

Example: You’ve been invited to speak to a company that is new to you. You don’t know whether their corporate atmosphere is formal or relaxed. Through audience analysis, you discover that nobody in the company wears a suit to work. So, you choose a less formal outfit to adapt to your audience.

How to Improve Ethos — Before Your Speech

The day of your presentation is too late to develop deep expertise about your topic. However, there’s much you can do before you say your first words:

#5: Show up Early to Welcome the Audience (Trustworthiness)

Showing up with minutes to spare gives the impression that you almost had somewhere more important to be. Showing up early demonstrates your dedication to serve the audience. This, in turn, builds trust.

#6: Share Event Experience with Audience (Similarity)

If your presentation is part of a larger event, try to attend as much of it as you can. Every minute you spend with your audience as an audience member builds your level of affiliation with them. The event becomes a shared experience. The audience sees you as one of them.

#7: Highlight Ethos in Marketing Materials (All)

Depending on the event, you may have an opportunity to provide an author’s bio to complement your speech title. Seize this opportunity. Make it clear to your potential audience why they should spend their time (and their money) to listen to you. This is particularly critical if you are at an event with concurrent sessions. Don’t assume that people make their decisions on topic alone.

Example: Suppose you will be speaking at the Arizona Teachers Association Annual Conference. Positive testimonials from past presentations to teacher associations would be effective to establish your reputation.

#8: Highlight Ethos in Introduction (All)

Your introduction is probably the single best opportunity for you to establish your ethos with this audience on this day. For this reason, you should always write your own introduction. Don’t let an event organizer wing it. Highlight the essential facts that establish your trustworthiness, similarity, authority, and reputation. As in the example above, pick the material specific to this audience and topic.

Beware that you don’t overdo it. Long introductions are boring. Long introductions filled with every accomplishment you’ve had since age 21 are boring and pompous.

Example: Suppose you are delivering user training for employees to introduce the new corporate financial system. Key items to highlight in your brief introduction might be:

1. You were the project manager for implementing the new system (Reputation)
2. You have implemented similar systems twice before in your career (Reputation)

How to Improve Ethos — During Your Speech

If you’ve done well so far, your audience is listening from your first word. Don’t get complacent. Continue building your ethos through your presentation:

#9: Tell stories or anecdotes which show you are consistent with your message (Trustworthiness)

Don’t be a hypocrite. Nobody will act on your advice if you don’t.

Example: Suppose you are trying to persuade your audience to support Habitat for Humanity, an international organization that builds homes to eliminate poverty. You can raise your ethos by crafting stories or anecdotes which demonstrate that you are active in the local Habitat organization.

By demonstrating that you follow your own advice, your audience is more likely to believe you on other points which cannot be so easily verified (for example, statistics about Habitat for Humanity).

#10: Use language familiar to your audience (Similarity)

Using language familiar to your audience is good for two reasons:

1. It aids in their understanding (which, indirectly, makes you more persuasive).
2. It helps the audience identify with you which boosts your ethos.

By “familiar language”, I mean more than English versus Dutch. As well, I mean more than using words which are understood by the audience.

To really get your audience to identify with you, you must use the terms that they would use to describe the concepts.

Example: A few examples might make this clearer:

1. Many people would understand that property agent is the same thing as a real estate agent. However, depending where you speak, one of these terms will be more common. Use it!
2. Acronyms are dangerous if you are using ones that your audience doesn’t know. Conversely, if everyone in your audience uses the term P.M. on a daily basis, you should use that term rather than project manager.

#11: Use visuals/examples which resonate with your audience (Similarity)

For any given message, you have a multitude of options for stories, anecdotes, visuals, or other techniques to convey your speech. From this multitude, try selecting the ones which have the biggest impact with this audience. Not only will you get the big impact, but the audience will also start thinking that you are just like them. That’s good for you!

Example: Suppose you are speaking to company management on the topic of goal-setting. Through audience analysis, you discovered that the company sponsored employees to run the local marathon. Although there are many metaphors and visuals you could use to talk about goal-setting, you choose to draw parallels between corporate goal-setting and the goals one sets when tackling a challenging race. You feature several vivid photographs of marathon races to complement your arguments.

#12: Choose quotations and statistics from the right sources (All)

Quotations and statistics are common speech tools which, on the surface, may contribute more to your logos (logical argument) than ethos. Nonetheless, if you choose the right sources, you can boost your ethos too.

Example: When researching a speech about cancer research, you discover two statistics that will help you make your argument.

1. The source of the first statistic is some unknown author on Wikipedia.
2. The source of the second statistic is the Mayo Clinic.

Which statistic is your audience more likely to believe? If you guessed the Mayo Clinic, you’re right. When you reference a reputable source, you boost your ethos by association.

So, the general guideline is to use quotations and statistics from sources which have high ethos to your audience, whether by trustworthiness, similarity, authority, or reputation.

#13: Reference people in the audience, or events earlier in the day (Similarity)

Earlier, we mentioned that, if possible, you should try to share the event experience with your audience. When you do, you can increase your ethos by incorporating something from that shared experience (or someone in the audience) into your speech. Your audience sees you as “one of them”, and a silent bond forms.

Example: In the presentation preceding yours, the speaker repeated a memorable phrase “It’s never too late.” If you can do it in a meaningful way, try to weave this phrase into your material.

How to Improve Ethos — After Your Speech

Your talk is done, but your effectiveness as a speaker is not yet written in stone. Here’s a few things you can do to continue to build up your ethos with this audience, or with your next audience.

#14: Make yourself available to your audience (Similarity)

Whenever possible, stick around after your presentation is over. Mingle with the audience and continue to share in the event experience. Not only will you have the opportunity for productive follow-up conversations, but your audience will see you as accessible, and accessible is good.

In short, your ethos will rise.

#15: Follow through on promises made during your presentation (Trustworthiness)

One technique for managing a short Q&A session is to defer thorny or complex questions to a later time.

Example: If someone asks a question as part of a 10-minute Q&A session that would take you 20 minutes to answer, it’s okay to defer the question saying: “I’d like to give the complete answer, but we don’t have time today. I’ll send it out to the group on email.”

It’s okay to do that, but only if you do follow up! If you fail to do so, your audience will judge you as being untrustworthy. Even if your presentation was great, your influence on their future actions is diminished.

Ethos in the short term versus the long term

In the above examples, you may have noticed that trustworthiness and similarity were mentioned much more often than authority or reputation. This is not an accident.

• You can significantly influence your audience’s on-the-spot assessment of your trustworthiness and similarity by following the advice above. While your audience may have preconceptions about you in these dimensions, you may be able to change their mind.
• It is much harder to change your audience’s on-the-spot assessment of your authority and reputation. Your audience’s perception of you along these dimensions is mostly fixed before your speech starts. Either you are an expert in the field, or you are not. Either you have formal authority over your audience, or you don’t. Not much that you say in a one hour speech will change either of these.

Next in this Series…

In the next article of this series, we’ll switch our focus to examine pathos: your emotional connection with the audience.

Similar Articles You May Like... What is Ethos and Why is it Critical for Speakers? Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking Book Review: Made to Stick Should a Speaker Apologize to the Audience?

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

Twice each month, Six Minutes weekend reviews bring you the best public speaking articles from throughout the public speaking blogosphere.

Please share them with anyone you feel would benefit from the tips and techniques.

This review features topics including:

• recently released public speaking books;
• storytelling and details;
• remedies for voice malfunctions;
• handling hecklers;
• thanking the audience;
• cartoons in presentations;
• rehearsal strategies;
• a speech critique of Sir Ken Robinson;
• and more!

From the Six Minutes Archives

One Year Ago from Six Minutes…

• Speech Analysis: Barack Obama’s Inaugural Speech
  5 Speechwriting Lessons from a speech with impossible expectations.

Two Years Ago from Six Minutes…

• Should a Speaker Apologize to the Audience
  Examines conventional speaking wisdom that one should never apologize.

Recently on Six Minutes…

• Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking
  Introduction to the article series which examines these core concepts.
• What is Ethos and Why is it Critical for Speakers?
  Defines ethos along four characteristics: trustworthiness, similarity, authority, and reputation.
• Book Review: Confessions of  a Public Speaker
  An entertaining and insightful insider’s view of public speaking. This review was followed by a contest where Six Minutes readers submitted their confessions and insights.

Resources for Speakers – Public Speaking Books

Check out these recently released public speaking and communications books:

• Perfect Phrases for Communicating Change by Lawrence Polsky and Antoine Gerschel
• The Body Language Handbook: How to Read Everyone's Hidden Thoughts and Intentions by Gregory Hartley and Maryann Karinch
• Voice of Influence: How to Get People to Love to Listen to You by Judy Apps
• Making Learning Stick: 20 Proven Techniques That Produce Results by Barbara Carnes
• The Choreography of Presenting: The 7 Essential Abilities of Effective Presenters by Kendall Zoller

Speechwriting

• Denise Graveline urges you to add compelling details to stories.

Telling a story can be a powerful way to engage your audience, breathe life into a speech or presentation, get away from jargon to explain a complex point, or persuade your listeners.  But if you want the telling to be compelling, you need to sweat the details.

• Fred Miller emphasizes the importance of a strong speech closing.

This is why it is mandatory that you have a strong opening and a strong closing.  And of the two, more often than not, the closing will be recalled more than any other part of the presentation.

Memorize and practice, practice, practice your opening and closing!  Rehearse it so it becomes second nature to you.

Remember, though, it’s the first time this audience will hear it.  Don’t lose the enthusiasm and emotion you had when delivering the closing many audiences ago!

Delivery Techniques

• Kate Peters provides 3 remedies for common voice malfunctions.

1. If your voice croaks like a frog…
2. If your voice shakes…
3. If you get a tickle…

• Jim Anderson wonders how to handle hecklers.

When it comes to dealing with a heckler, a speaker’s options are somewhat limited. What is going on here is a power play – you own the stage, but the heckler is trying to take over your audience. The big unanswered question is which way will the audience go – will they side with the heckler or will they side with you, the speaker.

• Ellen Finkelstein shares a Toastmasters debate on whether to thank the audience or not.

I do like the idea of not making “thank you” your last words, though, and leaving the audience with a final, uplifting point. For example, I might say, “Thanks for your attention and remember that you CAN present complex data clearly!”

• Terry Gault questions responding in the Q&A with “That’s a good question.“

It’s a value judgment about the quality of the question.  If the questioner didn’t think it was a good question, they would not have asked it.

Visual Aids

• Troy Chollar demonstrates how to create an animated countdown timer in PowerPoint. [Ed. I'm going to try something like this to time out the breaks the next time I teach a course.]
• Philippa Leguen de Lacroix weighs the pros and cons of using cartoons in your presentation.

Cons:

1. The cartoon can be a distraction
2. The complexity or subtle humour of the cartoon may be lost on the audience
3. Your credibility may be undermined

Pros:

1. You can reinforce your point
2. The cartoon is a mind-break
3. Cartoons are entertaining!
4. Communication and learning works best using a combination of images and narrative

• Jan Schultink gives a step-by-step guide to effective slides with ample whitespace.

White space is a powerful element in slide design. An image with the subject in the center often does not leave enough space to let the slide breathe a bit. The following image sequence explain a work around. Basically, you stretch the background of the image without stretching and distorting the image subject itself.

Speaker Habits

• Bert Decker sums up one of my beliefs which led to founding Six Minutes: perpetual growth.

You’re either improving or decaying. [...] There is no in between. [...]

We’re all moving along the continuum of effective communicators. Even when you reach your goal as a communicator, the journey continues.

[...] Whatever you have achieved, there is always more work to be done. This is especially true when it comes to your image as a communicator.

• Stephanie Scotti suggests a strategy for rehearsal.

My rule of thumb is that a presentation that’s “well done” on paper is probably about 70% done in reality. On average, it takes three to five focused rehearsals for a speaker to really seal the deal — especially when it comes to critical or career-defining presentations.

• John Zimmer critiques Sir Ken Robinson’s TED speech.

Click here to view the embedded video.

• His talk seemed less a presentation to the audience and more a conversation with the audience.
• He did not need a single PowerPoint slide or other prop to support his talk.
• He involved the audience in many ways: his use of the word “we”; his asking several rhetorical questions; his reference to different things that the audience had experienced while at TED (e.g., his mentioning at 2:50, 13.30 and 17:55 other talks that the audience had heard); etc.
• He told stories! Great ones! Memorable ones! Stories that reinforced his main point.

Professional Speaking

• Cynthia Starks reports on a United States Supreme Court decision that may have consequences for corporate communicators.

“Thursday morning the Supreme Court, by an ideologically predictable 5-to-4 margin, overturned as unconstitutional laws that ban corporations from running TV ads explicitly backing or opposing candidates during election campaigns.”

Startling as the decision is, it’s also an opportunity for communications professionals to craft messages executives should be giving to their stakeholders in the coming weeks and months.

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Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.

Have you ever fainted in mid-sentence?

Have you ever shown up for a 1-hour seminar only to be told you had to give it eight times in a row?

Have you ever had your blouse pop open while speaking?

These were just a few of the confessions shared by Six Minutes readers in our contest to win a copy of Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun.

Thank you to everyone who participated. The responses are collectively funny, surprising, and educational. A few of the most shocking confessions and the most valuable insights are featured below. Click here to read all of them back at the original contest article.

Underwear, Clown Noses, and Hello Kitty Toys

Jeff Fisher:

Attracting, and keeping, the attention of an audience can be difficult when you are speaking in the last time slot of a long conference day. I’ve managed to keep audiences awake in the past by doing my presentation in my underwear, wearing a clown nose, giving out door prizes such as “Hello Kitty” toys, and more. Be unique, be daring, be humorous – and be sure to somehow tie the unusual action into the topic on which you are speaking.

Remuneration or Renumeration?

A.J. Kandy:

Our high school debating club participated in a province-wide debating tournament. Our president had typed up copies of the main debate topic for us, which was “Be it resolved that the renumeration of Members of Parliament must be modified.” We scratched our heads and prepared as best as we could, coming up with elaborate talking points about redistricting of electoral ridings. When we entered the first debate, we were shocked to find out that the topic was actually “…the _remuneration_ of Members of Parliament.” Our club president had to face some pretty tough questions the next day… Lesson learned? Preparation counts, but so does the ability to throw away the script and improvise judiciously.

Could you give that presentation 7 more times?

Lon:

I was speaking for a sales force training day at IBM, [and] was told they needed an hour long session and to be there by 8:30. What I didn’t know was that I was the only presenter of the day, and they wanted me to give the same presentation 8 times that day!

Choosing the Wrong Person for Eye Contact

Bernadette:

A friend was giving a presentation about making a website more accessible for disabled users (i.e., ADA-compliant) at a day-long conference on Diversity. To calm her nerves, she relied on the well-known tip of choosing and presenting to one person in the audience as if you’re having a simple conversation. However, the gentleman she selected in the front row gave her absolutely no encouragement in return. She grew more and more disheartened as the man didn’t even acknowledge her beyond a looking in her direction.

She realized the flaw in her plan when, after she concluded, the man pulled out his folding white cane and left. She had been trying to made eye contact with someone who is blind – a likely encounter anywhere, but especially at a conference themed for universal accessibility.

Yet again, know your audience!

Out Cold at the Podium

Dan Chihos:

I was in my last year of AFROTC at NDSU; one assignment was to prepare and give a speech to the Commander and his staff. I was so nervous that and unprepared that shortly after standing up to give my speech, I was out cold at the podium, I had fainted and was unable to complete the assignment. Somehow I was able to pass the class and earn my commission. I am now an active member of a local Toastmasters group.

The Curse of Knowledge

Barbara Brown:

My worst fault, to me, is that I tend to give analogies that are completely lost on my audience. I see a clear connection, but they don’t.
Then, I make it worse by over-explaining.

The Three-Word Speech

Peggy Bassett:

My most embarrassing moment occurred when I attempted to give a speech without my notes. I’d rehearsed and was please with my practice. But, when I gave the speech, I went totally blank. I couldn’t even remember the topic! After standing there a few moments, I said, “To be continued!” and left the podium. The lesson I learned: No matter how rehearsed you are, always, always carry a copy of your speech with a brief outline to jog your memory in case of an emergency!

Speaking Without Conviction

Sandrina:

On my business college course, we all had assignments to make presentations about a certain company and present their product in best possible way like we are selling it. I chose a tobacco company where my mother works because I knew all about it. Therefore I would not need to invest a lot of time preparing the presentation. It took me just couple of hours to prepare everything. Presentation looked great, there was lot of information and it was very well presented, but when the questions from audience started it turned into a disaster. Why? Because I am a non-smoker and I actually hate that company.

You have to believe what are you talking about.

Really Connecting with 2nd Graders

Jonna E Ritchie:

My public speaking confession: I often look at a general table area common to all the people at the table when I speak. It gives them the impression that I’m making individual eye contact, when I’m not. Most embarrassing experience: I gave a talk to a group of 2nd graders and they seemed to be really getting the topic and appeared very focused, laughed in all the ‘right’ spots, etc. When I asked for questions at the end one of them asked what I had stuck to my front tooth. It was spinach from a salad. They weren’t laughing at WHAT I was saying, but instead AT me. I didn’t interpret their enthusiasm correctly. Embarrassing!

Speech Enemy #1: Almonds

Kevin Wortman:

I was scheduled to speak before a senior leadership team one afternoon and decided to quiet a hungry stomach with a handful of almonds just prior to the talk. Little did I know that in an attempt to quiet my stomach, I sacrificed my voice. After my introduction, an almond skin tickled my throat and I went into a hacking fit. It’s difficult to convey a message when you are turning your esophagus inside out. Needless to say, I’ve learned that a simple drink of water works best before a speech and have practiced that approach ever since.

Value for the Audience & A Popping Blouse Button

Beth Bridges:

Lesson Learned:
As Chief Networking Officer of the Clovis Chamber, I am frequently invited to speak on networking. I was invited to one of the area’s larger, more established Rotary Clubs. As I was looking out over the audience, a wave of panic overcame me. “What could I possibly have to say to this group of experienced business people?!”
I plowed through, sweating it out, but the intimidation factor didn’t make it one of my better presentations. I felt like it was a complete waste of time.
But that afternoon, I got a call from one of the audience members. “I really appreciated the information, I didn’t know a lot of what you presented, and I’d like for you to come speak to my employees and my business neighbors.” That presentation turned into another speech and is still having further effects.
Lesson? Even if just ONE person takes something away, you should never feel like you have nothing to offer.

Now for the embarrassing story:
I was presenting to a small group of about 20 people in a classroom setting when a button located in a strategic place on my blouse, popped off and audibly hit the desk in front of me. Fortunately I was wearing a jacket. I turned around, buttoned up, and no one ever said a thing. But I think my face was as red as the blouse!

More Speaking Confessions and Insights

This was just a sample of entries received. Click here to read all of them.

And the Winners Are…

Three readers who submitted confessions were drawn randomly to receive a copy of Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun.

Congratulations to:

• Colleen Cole
• Jeff Fisher
• Beth Bridges

Winners have been notified by email.

Similar Articles You May Like... Win a Book! Share Your Public Speaking Confessions Contest: Win a Book by Recommending a Book World’s Best Presentation Contest

Have a Question? Contact me anytime, or find me on Twitter: @6minutes

Andrew Dlugan is the editor and founder of Six Minutes. He teaches courses, leads seminars, coaches speakers, and strives to avoid Suicide by PowerPoint. He is an award-winning public speaker and speech evaluator. Andrew is a father and husband who resides in British Columbia, Canada.